Court of Arbitration for Sport to work at Incheon during Asiad

Mumbai: The Incheon Asian Games, scheduled from September 19 to October 4 in South Korea, will be the first continental games to have a Court of Arbitration for Sport`s (CAS) ad-hoc division to deal with disputes, after the Olympic Games of 1996 and Commonwealth Games in 1998.

This was announced in Kuwait City, which is hosting the Sport Arbitration Forum for representatives from National Olympic Committees of Oceania, Africa and Asia, by CAS` Secretary General Matthieu Reeb at a presentation to the delegates, a release from the Olympic Council of Asia said. This would lead to quicker, less bureaucratic procedure and decisions within 24 hours, Reeb said. "Since world football body FIFA recognised CAS in 2004, the number of cases had more than doubled, and now 55-60 per cent of all cases involved football, including contractual disputes and UEFA match-fixing and Financial Fair Play matters," he said. "Doping cases took up another 30 per cent," he added. On this occasion, the President of the Swiss-based CAS, John Coates of Australia, who is also a Vice President of the International Olympic Committee, thanked the OCA and ANOC President Sheikh Ahmad Al Fahad Al Sabah, for his support to CAS, highlighting the USD 2.5 million ANOC allocation to CAS and the OCA`s invitation to CAS to form ad-hoc division in Incheon. Coates said CAS, formed 30 years ago, had 40 cases in 1994 compared to 408 in 2013. The number of employees has grown from three to 24 and the budget from 1 million Swiss Francs to 12 million Swiss Francs. He said that CAS had now become the Supreme Court for sport and the efforts to regionalize the procedures had resulted in Alternative Hearing Centres in Abu Dhabi, Shanghai, Kuala Lumpur and Cairo, in addition to the headquarters in Switzerland.